Joni Wallis | |
---|---|
Alma mater | University of Manchester (BSc) University of Cambridge (PhD) |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Cognitive neuroscience Neurophysiology Decision making Reinforcement learning [1] |
Institutions | University of California, Berkeley |
Thesis | Functions of the orbital and medial prefrontal cortex of the common marmoset (Callithrix jacchus) (2000) |
Doctoral advisor | Angela C. Roberts |
Other academic advisors | Earl K. Miller |
Website | wallislab |
Joni Wallis is a cognitive neurophysiologist and Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of California, Berkeley. [1]
Wallis received her Bachelors of Science in Psychology and Neuroscience from the University of Manchester in 1995. She received her PhD in Experimental Psychology and Anatomy from the University of Cambridge, where she worked in the laboratory of Angela C. Roberts . [2] [3]
Wallis moved to the United States for her postdoctoral research fellowship in the laboratory of Earl K. Miller studying neuronal activity in the prefrontal cortex, [4] or the region of the brain that plays a key role in executive functions, which allow animals to coordinate appropriate responses to plan, reason, problem solve, and effectively reach goals. [5] [6] There, she explored the neural basis of how the prefrontal cortex encodes abstract rules to inform decisions under different circumstances. [7] [8]
Wallis's research centers on understanding how the frontal cortex of the brain is functionally organized to help people set and attain goals at the level of single neurons. Decision making requires weighing the costs and benefits of different courses of action. Wallis's group has investigated how cost-benefit analysis is undertaken in the brain to make effective decisions by monitoring single neuronal activity. [9] They trained monkeys to make decisions that required integrating reward that required a certain amount of effort cost or a certain amount of delay cost. They found that single prefrontal cortex neurons played a role in encoding the type of cost decision the monkeys faced. The finding built on Wallis's previous work that found individual neurons in this region encoded several decision attributes, such as the probability of reward, the magnitude of the reward, and how much effort that reward would require. [10] [11] Her research group also found that neurons involved in associating stimuli with certain rewarding outcomes are found in the orbitofrontal cortex, while neurons involved in associating actions with certain rewarding outcomes are found in the anterior cingulate cortex. [12]
Wallis's group has also studied the dynamics of decision making in both humans and monkeys over the period of time over which they are making a particular decision. [13] Using primate neurophysiology and human magnetoencephalography, they measured how brain activity changed as primates and humans were making different decisions. Their findings were consistent with a mathematical model of decision making, drawing connections between economic models of choice and the underlying neuroscience. In a different study, Wallis's group was able to deduce neuronal signatures as the brains of monkeys evaluate different choices, tracking the dynamics of neurons firing over time and space in the orbitofrontal cortex of the brain. [14] When considering two options, the group of neurons associated with each of the two options would alternate firing, flipping back and forth between the two options before finally deciding.
Her research is currently supported by two Research Project Grants (R01) awarded by the National Institute of Mental Health—one for the Functional Architecture of the Oribitofrontal Cortex awarded in 2014 and the other for the Frontostriatal Rhythms Underlying Reinforcement Learning awarded in 2018. [15] [16] The ultimate goal of her group's work is to better understand how to develop treatments for mental illness. She was first drawn to the field after her PhD supervisor introduced her to patients who sustained damage to their orbitofrontal cortex and had difficulty making decisions, despite having other cognitive processes intact. [17]
The striatum or corpus striatum is a cluster of interconnected nuclei that make up the largest structure of the subcortical basal ganglia. The striatum is a critical component of the motor and reward systems; receives glutamatergic and dopaminergic inputs from different sources; and serves as the primary input to the rest of the basal ganglia.
The mesolimbic pathway, sometimes referred to as the reward pathway, is a dopaminergic pathway in the brain. The pathway connects the ventral tegmental area in the midbrain to the ventral striatum of the basal ganglia in the forebrain. The ventral striatum includes the nucleus accumbens and the olfactory tubercle.
The neocortex, also called the neopallium, isocortex, or the six-layered cortex, is a set of layers of the mammalian cerebral cortex involved in higher-order brain functions such as sensory perception, cognition, generation of motor commands, spatial reasoning and language. The neocortex is further subdivided into the true isocortex and the proisocortex.
Brodmann area 10 is the anterior-most portion of the prefrontal cortex in the human brain. BA10 was originally defined broadly in terms of its cytoarchitectonic traits as they were observed in the brains of cadavers, but because modern functional imaging cannot precisely identify these boundaries, the terms anterior prefrontal cortex, rostral prefrontal cortex and frontopolar prefrontal cortex are used to refer to the area in the most anterior part of the frontal cortex that approximately covers BA10—simply to emphasize the fact that BA10 does not include all parts of the prefrontal cortex.
Brodmann area 11 is one of Brodmann's cytologically defined regions of the brain. It is in the orbitofrontal cortex which is above the eye sockets (orbitae). It is involved in decision making, processing rewards, and encoding new information into long-term memory.
Frontotemporal dementia (FTD), also called frontotemporal degeneration disease or frontotemporal neurocognitive disorder, encompasses several types of dementia involving the progressive degeneration of the brain's frontal and temporal lobes. Men and women appear to be equally affected. FTD generally presents as a behavioral or language disorder with gradual onset. Signs and symptoms tend to appear in late adulthood, typically between the ages of 45 and 65, although it can affect people younger or older than this. Currently, no cure or approved symptomatic treatment for FTD exists, although some off-label drugs and behavioral methods are prescribed.
Dopaminergic pathways in the human brain are involved in both physiological and behavioral processes including movement, cognition, executive functions, reward, motivation, and neuroendocrine control. Each pathway is a set of projection neurons, consisting of individual dopaminergic neurons.
The motor cortex is the region of the cerebral cortex involved in the planning, control, and execution of voluntary movements. The motor cortex is an area of the frontal lobe located in the posterior precentral gyrus immediately anterior to the central sulcus.
In mammalian brain anatomy, the prefrontal cortex (PFC) covers the front part of the frontal lobe of the cerebral cortex. It is the association cortex in the frontal lobe. The PFC contains the Brodmann areas BA8, BA9, BA10, BA11, BA12, BA13, BA14, BA24, BA25, BA32, BA44, BA45, BA46, and BA47.
A neuronal ensemble is a population of nervous system cells involved in a particular neural computation.
The orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) is a prefrontal cortex region in the frontal lobes of the brain which is involved in the cognitive process of decision-making. In non-human primates it consists of the association cortex areas Brodmann area 11, 12 and 13; in humans it consists of Brodmann area 10, 11 and 47.
Supplementary eye field (SEF) is the name for the anatomical area of the dorsal medial frontal lobe of the primate cerebral cortex that is indirectly involved in the control of saccadic eye movements. Evidence for a supplementary eye field was first shown by Schlag, and Schlag-Rey. Current research strives to explore the SEF's contribution to visual search and its role in visual salience. The SEF constitutes together with the frontal eye fields (FEF), the intraparietal sulcus (IPS), and the superior colliculus (SC) one of the most important brain areas involved in the generation and control of eye movements, particularly in the direction contralateral to their location. Its precise function is not yet fully known. Neural recordings in the SEF show signals related to both vision and saccades somewhat like the frontal eye fields and superior colliculus, but currently most investigators think that the SEF has a special role in high level aspects of saccade control, like complex spatial transformations, learned transformations, and executive cognitive functions.
Frontostriatal circuits are neural pathways that connect frontal lobe regions with the striatum and mediate motor, cognitive, and behavioural functions within the brain. They receive inputs from dopaminergic, serotonergic, noradrenergic, and cholinergic cell groups that modulate information processing. Frontostriatal circuits are part of the executive functions. Executive functions include the following: selection and perception of important information, manipulation of information in working memory, planning and organization, behavioral control, adaptation to changes, and decision making. These circuits are involved in neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease as well as neuropsychiatric disorders including schizophrenia, depression, obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), and in neurodevelopmental disorder such as attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).
The posterior parietal cortex plays an important role in planned movements, spatial reasoning, and attention.
The ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) is a part of the prefrontal cortex in the mammalian brain. The ventral medial prefrontal is located in the frontal lobe at the bottom of the cerebral hemispheres and is implicated in the processing of risk and fear, as it is critical in the regulation of amygdala activity in humans. It also plays a role in the inhibition of emotional responses, and in the process of decision-making and self-control. It is also involved in the cognitive evaluation of morality.
The primary gustatory cortex (GC) is a brain structure responsible for the perception of taste. It consists of two substructures: the anterior insula on the insular lobe and the frontal operculum on the inferior frontal gyrus of the frontal lobe. Because of its composition the primary gustatory cortex is sometimes referred to in literature as the AI/FO(Anterior Insula/Frontal Operculum). By using extracellular unit recording techniques, scientists have elucidated that neurons in the AI/FO respond to sweetness, saltiness, bitterness, and sourness, and they code the intensity of the taste stimulus.
Earl Keith Miller is a cognitive neuroscientist whose research focuses on neural mechanisms of cognitive, or executive, control. Earl K. Miller is the Picower Professor of Neuroscience with the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory and the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is the Chief Scientist and co-founder of SplitSage. He is a co-founder of Neuroblox.
Prefrontal synthesis is the conscious purposeful process of synthesizing novel mental images. PFS is neurologically different from the other types of imagination, such as simple memory recall and dreaming. Unlike dreaming, which is spontaneous and not controlled by the prefrontal cortex (PFC), PFS is controlled by and completely dependent on the intact lateral prefrontal cortex. Unlike simple memory recall that involves activation of a single neuronal ensemble (NE) encoded at some point in the past, PFS involves active combination of two or more object-encoding neuronal ensembles (objectNE). The mechanism of PFS is hypothesized to involve synchronization of several independent objectNEs. When objectNEs fire out-of-sync, the objects are perceived one at a time. However, once those objectNEs are time-shifted by the lateral PFC to fire in-phase with each other, they are consciously experienced as one unified object or scene.
Neuromorality is an emerging field of neuroscience that studies the connection between morality and neuronal function. Scientists use fMRI and psychological assessment together to investigate the neural basis of moral cognition and behavior. Evidence shows that the central hub of morality is the prefrontal cortex guiding activity to other nodes of the neuromoral network. A spectrum of functional characteristics within this network to give rise to both altruistic and psychopathological behavior. Evidence from the investigation of neuromorality has applications in both clinical neuropsychiatry and forensic neuropsychiatry.
Social cognitive neuroscience is the scientific study of the biological processes underpinning social cognition. Specifically, it uses the tools of neuroscience to study "the mental mechanisms that create, frame, regulate, and respond to our experience of the social world". Social cognitive neuroscience uses the epistemological foundations of cognitive neuroscience, and is closely related to social neuroscience. Social cognitive neuroscience employs human neuroimaging, typically using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Human brain stimulation techniques such as transcranial magnetic stimulation and transcranial direct-current stimulation are also used. In nonhuman animals, direct electrophysiological recordings and electrical stimulation of single cells and neuronal populations are utilized for investigating lower-level social cognitive processes.